Cardinals To Sign Steven Matz
The Cardinals have made a late-night strike to bolster their rotation, reportedly reaching agreement with free agent starter Steven Matz on a four-year, $44MM guarantee, pending a physical. Incentives could eventually push that figure as high as $48MM. Matz is a client of Icon Sports Management.
Matz reportedly fielded offers from eight clubs, and interest was robust enough that he’d been expected to sign before Thanksgiving. Teams’ affinity for the 30-year-old is also evident in the eventual contract terms, as Matz’s deal fairly handily tops MLBTR’s three-year, $27MM projection entering the winter.
The left-hander has been a reliable rotation member for the majority of the past few years. He’s eclipsed 150 innings and posted an ERA between 3.82 and 4.21 in each of the last three 162-game seasons. His peripherals haven’t been quite as impressive, but Matz has typically offered near league average rate numbers while reliably taking the ball every fifth day.
Matz has never had elite swing-and-miss stuff. That continued to be the case in 2021, as his 22.3% strikeout percentage and 9.4% swinging strike rate were both a bit shy of the respective league average marks (22.6% and 10.9%) for starting pitchers. That’s arguably less alarming for St. Louis than it would be for other clubs around the league, as the Cardinals have reportedly been seeking pitchers best equipped to take advantage of the team’s elite defense. Matz seems to fit that bill, as he annually posts walk rates lower than most and typically induces ground balls at a slightly higher than average rate.
He’s also one of the harder throwers available, averaging 94.5 MPH on his sinker in each of the past two years. That’s particularly rare for a left-handed starter, with only seven other southpaws (minimum 100 innings) throwing harder on average in 2021. He’ll add a different look to a Cardinals rotation that otherwise projects to include right-handers Adam Wainwright, Jack Flaherty, Miles Mikolas and Dakota Hudson.
Further adding to Matz’s appeal is that the Blue Jays declined to issue him a qualifying offer at the start of the offseason. The signing won’t cost St. Louis any draft pick compensation, and Toronto won’t receive any form of compensation for his departure. The Jays were reportedly among the teams to put forth an offer in hopes of keeping Matz north of the border, but that effort proved not to be enough to keep him in a Jays uniform for more than one season.
There’s plenty about Matz for the St. Louis front office to like, but this deal does come with its share of risk. While Matz was a solid performer in three of the past four seasons, his 2020 campaign was nothing short of a disaster. He was tagged for a 9.68 ERA across 30 2/3 innings that year, serving up a staggering 14 home runs in that time. Including that showing deals a heavy blow to Matz’s otherwise fairly solid recent work.
Going back to the start of 2018, he owns a cumulative 4.36 ERA/4.55 FIP in just under 500 frames. That’s not particularly impressive production in aggregate, worse than that of Anthony DeSclafani, who signed for three years and $36MM with the Giants on Monday. DeSclafani is a year older than Matz is, and perhaps the Cardinals are simply willing to write off 2020 as a small sample in an overall anomalous year.
Homers have been an issue for Matz for the bulk of his career in spite of his ground-ball proclivities, though. He’s generally given up a lot of hard contact when batters have managed to get the ball in the air against him. The 2021 campaign was the first of his career in which he’s allowed a homer per fly ball rate lower than the league mark. Whether he can sustain that kind of success keeping the ball in the yard could go a long way towards determining whether he’ll continue to post a sub-4.00 ERA over the coming seasons.
The specifics on Matz’s contract have yet to be reported, but he’ll receive an average annual value of $11MM. The Cardinals have the flexibility to accommodate an eight figure salary over the coming few seasons, with Jason Martinez of Roster Resource projecting the club’s 2022 player commitments in the $142MM range before accounting for Matz’s deal. Their obligations come out around $77MM in 2023. The franchise has opened the past few seasons with payrolls hovering right around $160MM, so a flat $11MM annual payment would leave somewhere around $7MM – $10MM in 2022 spending capacity if ownership signs off on a similar payroll next year. (Backloading the deal would obviously leave more immediate space but have a higher hit on the club’s future commitments).
That could allow St. Louis to make another addition or two elsewhere on the roster, and Katie Woo of the Athletic tweets that the Cardinals are expected to continue to add. It’s already a solid group without many obvious holes on paper, although shortstop, backup catcher and the bullpen all stand out as speculative possibilities for upgrades over the coming months.
Jeff Passan of ESPN reported that the Cardinals and Matz were in agreement on a four-year, $44MM guarantee that could max out at $48MM based on incentives.
Image courtesy of USA Today Sports.
Athletics Sign Ryan Castellani
The A’s have signed right-hander Ryan Castellani, reports Chris Hilburn-Trenkle of Baseball America. Presumably, it’s a minor league deal that’ll include an invitation to big league Spring Training.
Castellani has appeared in the big leagues with the Rockies in each of the past two seasons, but the bulk of his experience came in 2020. He made ten appearances (including nine starts) during last year’s truncated campaign, working to a 5.82 ERA/6.49 SIERA over 43 1/3 innings. Castellani pitched in just one big league game this year, tossing 3 1/3 frames of two-run ball during a May 4 victory over the Giants.
The past two seasons haven’t been kind to Castellani, who has also struggled mightily with the Rox’s top affiliate in Albuquerque. That’s among the most hitter-friendly environments in affiliated ball, though, and the 25-year-old comes with some decent prospect pedigree.
A former second-round pick, Castellani appeared among Baseball America’s top ten Colorado farmhands entering each of the 2017, 2018 and 2020 campaigns. The sinkerballer has never missed many bats, but he posted solid walk and ground-ball numbers early in his professional tenure. He’s worked almost exclusively as a starter to this point, but it’s possible the A’s view him as rotation or long relief depth for 2022.
Dodgers Sign Jason Martin, Beau Burrows
The Dodgers recently reached agreements with outfielder Jason Martin and right-hander Beau Burrows. Martin’s deal was reported by Chris Hilburn-Trenkle of Baseball America; Burrows announced his own agreement with Los Angeles on Twitter this evening. Presumably, both contracts are minor league pacts that contain Spring Training invitations.
Martin has appeared in the majors in each of the past three seasons. Part of the Pirates’ four-player return from the Astros in the 2018 Gerrit Cole trade, he only tallied 51 trips to the plate in Pittsburgh over his first two seasons. Martin’s most extensive big league time came this past season when he logged 154 plate appearances with the Rangers. The 26-year-old hit just .208/.248/.354 with six homers in that time, though, and Texas outrighted him off the 40-man roster at the end of the season.
Over parts of three Triple-A campaigns, the Southern California native owns a .243/.315/.412 slash line. Martin has spent the bulk of his minor league time in center field, but the Rangers mostly deployed him in left field at the big league level. A left-handed hitter, Martin will likely try to compete for fourth or fifth outfield duty next spring.
Burrows is a former first-round pick of the Tigers. He made his big league debut with Detroit last year and split the 2021 campaign between the Tigers and division-rival Twins. Burrows’ big league experience consists of just 17 2/3 innings of 10.70 ERA ball, and he’s allowed eight long balls with eleven strikeouts and walks apiece.
The 25-year-old hasn’t fared especially well in Triple-A either, but he’s not far removed from being one of the more well-regarded arms coming up through the Tigers’ organization. He’s pitched reasonably well as a starter up through Double-A and could be viewed as either rotation or bullpen depth for Los Angeles.
Yankees Place Clint Frazier, Rougned Odor On Release Waivers
4:49 pm: Frazier has been placed on release waivers, but he has not yet cleared, tweets MLBTR’s Steve Adams. The waiver period expires tomorrow, so it remains possible another team grabs Frazier off the wire. If he passes through unclaimed, he’ll hit free agency.
4:05 pm: New York announced they’ve released both Frazier and Rougned Odor, who was also designated for assignment last week. Odor hit .202/.286/.379 across 361 plate appearances with the Yankees this past season. The Rangers will remain on the hook for almost all of his $12.33MM salary for 2022, per the terms of the teams’ April trade.
2:51 pm: The Yankees have released outfielder Clint Frazier following last week’s DFA, tweets MLB Network’s Jon Heyman.
The 2021 season proved to be a brutal one for Frazier, a former first-round pick and top prospect whom the Yankees acquired from Cleveland as part of their return for lefty Andrew Miller. Frazier looked like a breakout candidate from 2019-20 when he posted a combined .267/.347/.497 batting line with 20 homers, 20 doubles and a triple in 465 plate appearances. However, he appeared in just 66 games this season and tallied 218 plate appearances with a woeful .186/.317/.317 output in that time.
More concerning than his bottom-line performance, however, were persistent health issues that still remain somewhat vague and unclear to the public. Frazier has had a concussion in 2018 and has since spent time on the injured list for blurred vision, dizziness and other vertigo-like symptoms. He pulled himself from a minor league rehab assignment this summer, after which manager Aaron Boone told reporters that Frazier was “not quite feeling where he needed to be.” He didn’t return to the field thereafter.
Precisely what has bothered Frazier, however, hasn’t been fully clear. The Yankees were typically vague with updates, and Frazier himself tweeted on Oct. 11 that the injury issues have been “very personal to me and something I’ve wanted to handle privately.” There’s no sense in speculating as to the root of the issue, but the obvious hope is that any maladies that have troubled the clearly talented 27-year-old can soon be put in the past.
With Frazier now reaching the market, he’ll be able to sign with any club. He still has three seasons of arbitration eligibility remaining, so Frazier will likely sign a one-year deal somewhere and, if all goes well, reenter the arbitration system with his new club. A rebuilding team with plenty of at-bats to offer could view Frazier as an appealing upside play — not entirely dissimilar from David Dahl an offseason ago. While the Dahl signing didn’t pan out in Texas, Frazier will surely have teams interested in a similar scenario — assuming he’s in good health.
Prior to his MLB debut, Frazier ranked among the 50 best prospects in the game on most notable lists. He’s a career .262/.333/.471 hitter in 934 Triple-A plate appearances, and Frazier entered the 2021 season as a career .258/.331/.475 hitter in 589 MLB trips to the plate.
Royals Release Kyle Zimmer
NOVEMBER 22: The Royals announced Monday afternoon that they’ve placed Zimmer on release waivers.
NOVEMBER 19: The Kansas City Royals have added six players to their 40-man roster, per Anne Rogers of MLB.com. Making the move to the 40-man roster are some highly touted players, namely catcher MJ Melendez, first baseman Nick Pratto, shortstop Maikel Garcia, and right-handed pitchers Jonathan Bowlan, Collin Snider, and Nathan Webb. Right-handed pitcher Kyle Zimmer has been designated for assignment in order to accommodate these transactions, as the team’s 40-man roster is now full.
The 30-year-old Zimmer was a mainstay on top prospect lists for years following his fifth overall selection in the 2012 amateur draft. Frequent injuries ultimately dampened the hype surrounding the talented right-hander, but a very encouraging showing at the Major League level in 2020 gave some hope for optimism. A move to the bullpen yielded promising results in 2020 but that wasn’t true for the two seasons surrounding it, as Zimmer struggled to command the strike zone in the Major leagues either season. All told, Zimmer carries a 5.19 ERA through 95 innings at the game’s highest level. Teams will likely be lining up to take a flyer on a player who has shown flashes of brilliance when healthy enough to take the mound.
In one of the more obvious selections of the day, MJ Melendez finds himself on the 40-man squad after a monstrous showing in the minors. The 22-year-old catcher had only once seen his name appear on a Top 100 prospect list, back before a dismal 2019 season dimmed his star considerably. A .285/.372/.628 showing in Double-A this year turned into an even better .293/.413/.620 line at Triple-A however, putting him right back on the map as one of the more promising prospects in baseball. Positive reviews for his defense and 41 home runs in a minor league season should lead to a Major League promotion for Melendez soon.
The left-handed Pratto practically mimicked Melendez’s 2021 performance en route to a no-doubt 40-man roster selection. The fourteenth overall pick in the 2017 draft, Pratto struggled to live up to the hype in 2019 before the canceled 2020 minor league season allowed him to revamp his approach. Between Double-A and Triple-A Pratto hit a robust .265/.385/.602, with 36 home runs and 12 steals (in 17 tries).
By placing Maikel Garcia on their roster the Royals are protecting a more unheralded member of their organization. The 21-year-old has yet to show up on prospect lists or hit for much power, but the shortstop did show promise across two levels this past season. Garcia managed a solid .291/.380/.405 slash line across at the A and high-A levels, swiping 35 bags in 41 tries along the way.
Like the other Royals players listed here, 24-year-old Jonathan Bowlan found success in the 2021 season by pitching to a 1.59 ERA at the Double-A level. Unfortunately, that success came across just 17 innings before an elbow injury and subsequent Tommy John surgery wiped out his season. Bowlan’s second-round pedigree and strong 2019 season was clearly enough for the Royals to worry a rival team would pounce on a Rule 5 draft selection, even if Bowlan spends a portion of 2022 recovering from surgery.
A 26-year-old reliever, Collin Snider wasn’t listed among the Royals top 30 prospects in the eyes of MLB.com. After a solid Double-A showing looked to be upping his stock, Snider ran into Triple-A trouble. Across both levels and 66 innings Snider turned in a 4.48 ERA, with strong groundball rates but a strikeout rate that nosedived after the promotion. Kansas City likely views Snider as a player who more closely resembles the player he was in Double-A and may soon entrust him with a Major League gig with additional seasoning.
Nathan Webb is another relief prospect who showed enough in the minors this past season to warrant protection by the Royals. The 34th-rounder punched out 89 batters in just 59 innings, and saw both his command and groundball tendencies improve following a promotion to the High-A level. The resulting 3.94 is hardly elite, but rival teams may have been intrigued by a talented 24-year old who could pitch out of their bullpen for very little investment.
Giants Re-Sign Anthony DeSclafani
The Giants have made the first of what’ll be multiple additions to the starting rotation, announcing agreement with free agent starter Anthony DeSclafani on a three-year, $36MM contract. (The team confirmed the contract terms). The deal pays the VC Sports Group client flat $12MM salaries each year from 2022-24.
DeSclafani, 32 next April, spent this past season in San Francisco. He joined the organization on a one-year, $6MM guarantee last December. That was a buy-low play for the front office, as DeSclafani has struggled with both injuries and performance en route to a 7.22 ERA across 33 2/3 innings the year before, his final season with the Reds.
The move worked out as well as president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi could have reasonably expected. DeSclafani stayed healthy — aside from a minimal IL stint due to ankle inflammation — and made 31 starts, finishing 18th in the National League in innings pitched. Along with taking on a heavy workload, DeSclafani posted arguably the best rate numbers of his career. He worked to a personal low 3.17 ERA and 3.62 FIP, while his 4.11 SIERA is right in line with his best marks during his time in Cincinnati.
Despite averaging north of 94 MPH on his fastball, DeSclafani’s swing-and-miss and strikeout numbers are more fine than spectacular. His 11% swinging strike rate and 22.5% strikeout rate this past season were both almost exactly in line with the respective league averages (10.9% and 22.4%) for starting pitchers. While he hasn’t been overpowering, DeSclafani has typically paired those decent strikeout numbers with plus control and a ground-ball rate at or just a tick above the league average.
Fielding independent metrics suggest DeSclafani’s more of a capable mid-rotation workhorse than a true top-of-the-rotation starter. There’s plenty of value in a third or fourth starter who soaks up average to slightly above-average innings in bulk, though, and that’s the type of pitcher DeSclafani has been over the course of his career. For a Giants team that could’ve lost all but Logan Webb from this year’s rotation, making a run at bringing DeSclafani back always seemed like a strong possibility.
San Francisco elected not to make him an $18.4MM qualifying offer at the outset of the offseason, but they struck fairly quickly to bring him back on a multi-year deal at a lesser average annual value. The guarantee comes in just a hair below MLBTR’s three-year, $42MM projection. It’s a sensible price point, although it’s worth noting that this kind of deal has become fairly atypical as teams have tended to devalue mid-tier arms in recent years. Among free agent starting pitchers, only Kyle Gibson ($30MM with the Rangers in 2019-20) and Tyler Chatwood ($38MM with the Cubs in 2017-18) have signed three-year deals worth between $30MM and $50MM over the past five offseasons.
The Giants have an abundance of payroll flexibility — both in 2022 and beyond. They’re apparently taking advantage of it to address their aforementioned rotation needs early in the offseason. In addition to the already-finalized DeSclafani reunion, the club is reportedly nearing a two-year deal with Alex Wood and was said to be making a strong run at Alex Cobb this morning. Whether all three starters will wind up in black and orange remains to be seen, but it’s clear the front office has made addressing the rotation a priority — seemingly in advance of the December 1 expiration of the current collective bargaining agreement.
To clear space on the 40-man roster for DeSclafani’s return, the Giants designated corner outfielder Alex Dickerson for assignment. That’ll almost certainly conclude Dickerson’s two and a half season tenure in the Bay Area, as he has more than enough service time to refuse an outright assignment even if he’s not traded or claimed off waivers over the coming days.
The Giants acquired Dickerson in a minor deal with the division-rival Padres in June 2019. That paid off handsomely, as the lefty-hitting outfielder performed quite well down the stretch that year and mashed in a limited sample during last year’s shortened season. Between those two campaigns, Dickerson kicked off his Giants’ career with a .294/.361/.552 showing over his first 341 plate appearances.
Impressive as he started, Dickerson couldn’t get on track in 2021. While he tallied a career-high 312 plate appearances this past season, he managed just a .233/.304/.420 line with 13 home runs. Combined with a limited defensive profile and an arbitration salary projected by MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz to land in the $3MM range, the front office determined not to bring him back in 2022.
Jeff Passan of ESPN first reported that the Giants and DeSclafani had reached agreement on a three-year, $36MM deal. Kerry Crowley of the Bay Area News Group reported that the deal paid DeSclafani an even $12MM in each season.
Image courtesy of USA TODAY Sports.
Angels Sign Aaron Loup
The Angels announced they’ve signed reliever Aaron Loup to a two-year, $17MM guarantee. (The team announced the contract terms). He’ll receive successive $7.5MM salaries in 2022 and 2023, and the deal also contains a $7.5MM club option for 2024 that comes with a $2MM buyout. Loup is a client of the Beverley Hills Sports Council.
A longtime member of the Blue Jays’ bullpen early in his career, Loup had seemingly settled in as a competent journeyman not too long ago. He split the 2018 season between Toronto and the Phillies, then spent the next three years playing on either minor league or one-year big league deals with different clubs.
After an injury-wrecked 2019 campaign with the Padres, he settled for a minors pact with the Rays in 2020. Loup posted strong results in Tampa Bay but didn’t boast the kind of velocity teams typically covet from back-end arms. His 2020 numbers were enough to land him a guaranteed job with the Mets, albeit on a fairly low $3MM base salary.
Loup’s deal with the Angels shatters his previous three contracts, a testament to how effective he was in Queens. The Louisiana native worked to an incredible 0.95 ERA across 56 2/3 innings, a mark bested only by Seattle’s Casey Sadler among those with 30+ frames. Teams are looking far beyond ERA to evaluate pitchers (particularly relievers), but Loup’s underlying metrics also painted the picture of an elite late-innings arm.
The 33-year-old (34 next month) fanned a solid 26.1% of batters faced, the best full season mark of his career. That’s more good than dominant, but Loup has never been a particularly overpowering hurler. Relying primarily on a 92 MPH sinker and a mid-80s cutter/slider, the southpaw has typically been a ground-ball specialist. Loup routinely induces grounders on half or more of balls in play against him, and he continued to thrive in that regard this year. He also boasts plus control, only walking more batters than average in two of his eight career seasons with at least 20 innings pitched. His 7.3% walk percentage in 2021 was almost three points lower than the 9.8% league mark for bullpen arms.
Loup’s standout skill, however, has been contact suppression. He’s typically one of the league’s harder pitchers to square up, and that was never more true than in 2021. Only six of the 218 hitters who stepped in against him recorded an extra-base hit, and he remarkably allowed just a single home run. The Angels can’t reasonably count on Loup to be that effective moving forward, but the front office is clearly banking on him inducing plenty of grounders and otherwise unthreatening contact.
Adding to Loup’s appeal is that he stymied hitters from both sides of the plate. He’s always been a tough at-bat for left-handed hitters, and he was leveraged situationally quite a bit early in his career. But Loup has proven adept at getting righties out lately as well, holding them to a meager .205/.276/.311 line since the start of 2020. An ability to handle hitters from both sides of the plate has taken on an outsized importance in the three-batter minimum era, and Loup has proven capable of taking on that expanded role.
Loup was perhaps the top option in this offseason’s left-handed relief group. Andrew Chafin, Brooks Raley and former Angel Tony Watson now stand out as the best remaining arms in a fairly thin class. The combination of market scarcity and Loup’s recent dominance leads to a very solid contract that comes in a bit higher than generally expected.
The signing pushes the Angels’ estimated 2022 player commitments a bit north of $157MM, in the estimation of Jason Martinez of Roster Resource. Non-tenders could shave a couple million dollars off that tally, and there’s still some decent leeway before reaching the club’s near-$182MM season-opening 2021 payroll. That could give general manager Perry Minasian and his staff the chance for further upgrades, with the pitching staff and middle infield still standing out as potential target areas.
The Angels have already made one big rotation strike, signing Loup’s 2021 (and now 2022) teammate Noah Syndergaard to a $21MM deal. Even after the Syndergaard pickup, Minasian told reporters the club was hoping to further bolster the rotation (link via Rhett Bollinger of MLB.com). And while Loup should be a notable upgrade in the late innings, the club had a below-average relief corps in 2021 and is facing the potential free agent departure of closer Raisel Iglesias. An effort to retain or replace Iglesias still seems plausible, even with Loup now in the fold.
To create space on the 40-man roster, Los Angeles designated southpaw Hector Yan for assignment. The 22-year-old was highly regarded enough that the club added him to the 40-man last winter to keep him from potential selection in the Rule 5 draft. Yan struggled to a 5.25 ERA with a sky high 15.2% walk rate at High-A Tri-City, though, costing him his roster spot. The Angels will have ten days to trade Yan or place him on waivers.
Image courtesy of USA TODAY Sports.
Rangers Acquire Billy McKinney, Zach Reks From Dodgers
The Rangers announced they’ve acquired corner outfielders Billy McKinney and Zach Reks from the Dodgers in exchange for cash considerations. Both players were designated for assignment by Los Angeles last Friday, as many teams cleared roster space for prospects whom they didn’t want to leave eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Texas’ 40-man roster tally is up to 39.
McKinney has bounced around the league a fair amount this year. He opened the season with the Brewers but landed with the Mets via minor trade a few weeks into the season. After two months in Queens, McKinney was designated for assignment and traded to the Dodgers. The 27-year-old finished out the season in Southern California.
Between the three clubs, the left-handed hitting McKinney tallied exactly 300 plate appearances. It was a career-high in playing time, but the former first-rounder didn’t consistently perform at the plate. While he had a solid run with the Mets, McKinney struggled badly with the Brew Crew and Dodgers and ultimately managed a meager .192/.280/.358 season line with nine home runs. His 10.7% walk rate was solid, but McKinney also fanned at a higher-than-average 26.3% clip and didn’t hit for a ton of power. He’s out of minor league option years, so he’ll need to either break camp with Texas in 2022 or again be made available to the rest of the league.
Reks has essentially no big league body of work to speak of, with just ten MLB plate appearances under his belt. The 28-year-old is an accomplished minor league hitter, though, with a career .295/.383/.487 line on the farm. That includes a .282/.382/.529 showing across 764 plate appearances with the Dodgers’ top affiliate in Oklahoma City, where Reks has shown a promising combination of patience and power.
He’s a defensively-limited player with strikeout concerns, but there’s little harm for the Rangers in adding him for nothing more than cash considerations. The left-handed hitting Reks still has a pair of options remaining, so he can shuttled up and down between Arlington and Triple-A Round Rock through the end of the 2023 campaign if he sticks on the 40-man roster.
Braves Acquire Jay Jackson, Designate Yoan Lopez
The Giants have traded right-handed reliever Jay Jackson to the Braves in exchange for cash or a player to be named later, per a pair of team announcements. San Francisco designated Jackson for assignment on Friday while setting their 40-man roster prior to the Rule 5 protection deadline. Fellow right-hander Yoan Lopez was designated for assignment in a corresponding move, per the Braves.
Jackson, 34, has found new life in the big leagues after a strong four-year run with the Hiroshima Carp in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball. He’s been with the Brewers and the Giants since returning, most recently pitching to a 3.74 ERA with an impressive 31.3% strikeout rate in 21 1/3 innings for San Francisco last season. Jackson also averaged 94.8 mph on his heater, pairing that with a sizable 13.3% swinging-strike rate. Those numbers are impressive, to be sure, but Jackson has also struggled with his command at times, walking 13.5% of his opponents since his return from NPB.
Command issues notwithstanding, Jackson makes for a solid, low-cost pickup for the reigning World Series champs. In addition to a good run with the Giants’ big league club last year, he also posted a 1.29 ERA with a gaudy 24-to-1 K/BB ratio in 14 Triple-A frames in 2021. And, despite the fact that he’s 34 years old, Jackson still has a minor league option remaining, so he can give the Braves a good bit of flexibility in the bullpen.
The 28-year-old Lopez was traded from Arizona to Atlanta in a late-May deal that sent minor league outfielder Deivi Estrada to Arizona. Lopez had a solid run in Triple-A Gwinnett, tallying 32 2/3 innings of 3.03 ERA ball with a 26.7% strikeout rate and an 8.4% walk rate in that time.
Once a high-profile international signing by the D-backs, Lopez has only tallied 101 2/3 innings in the big leagues to this point. He carries a 4.25 ERA with a solid 7.7% walk rate but a below-average 19.1% strikeout rate. The Braves will have a week to trade Lopez, place him on outright waivers or release him.
Cubs Acquire Harold Ramirez From Guardians
The Cubs have acquired outfielder Harold Ramirez from the Guardians in exchange for cash, per a club announcement out of Chicago. Ramirez was one of seven players designated for assignment in Cleveland last Friday. The Cubs now have 38 players on their 40-man roster.
Ramirez, 27, made his big league debut with the Marlins in 2019 and earned quickly made himself into a Miami fan favorite with a mammoth first season in the Majors. In May 2019, Ramirez slashed .368/.419/.474 — understandably endearing himself to those who follow the Fish.
It’s been a steady decline since that point, however, as Ramirez has posted just .264/.299/.400 (86 wRC+). Ramirez has solid bat-to-ball skills but rarely walks and chases outside the zone far too often. Since 2019, Ramirez’s 43.6% chase rate on pitches off the plate is the ninth-highest mark among 340 players with at least 500 plate appearances. His .134 isolated power (slugging minus batting average) during that time ranks 281st in the same subset, placing him well shy of the league-average — particularly relative to his corner outfield peers.
Ramirez joins Michael Hermosillo as a right-handed-hitting bench option for the Cubs, though he doesn’t have the typical platoon splits one might expect. His numbers against lefties (.275/.315/.400, 92 wRC+) and righties (.270/.306/.408, 90 wRC+) are nearly identical. Defensively, Ramirez has appeared at all three outfield spots but is best-suited for work in either left field or right field.
Ramirez is out of minor league options, so the Cubs will either need to break camp with him on the Opening Day roster next year or else expose him to waivers. He’ll compete for a bench spot in Spring Training, but it also stands to reason that Chicago could be in the market for outfield upgrades this winter, which could complicate Ramirez’s path to a roster spot.